Morning Star (5 page)

“Hightailed? You mean the sheriff didn't catch up with him?”

“That's right. I suppose it'll be a while before we see much of the Prophet.” Mark looked at Andy, hardly believing the grin of amusement he was seeing.

Sally scooted back to them. As Andy lifted little Tamara, Sally leaned close to Mark. “Did Andy tell you what that place is?” She pointed to the little white frame building across the road.

Mark surveyed the building, “No, but I'd guess it's a store of some kind.”

Sally leaned closer. “A brothel!” she hissed. “Some say it's Bennett's idea. I can't believe the Prophet will tolerate that once he gets wind of it.”

“I can't believe Joseph would have that under his nose and
not
know about it,” Jenny said slowly, looking quizzically from Sally to Andy.

Mark watched Jenny for a moment, at first feeling elation; then the questions began. They were back in Joseph's territory. With a tired sigh, he waited until the women moved ahead before he took up the conversation with Andy.

“Have you any idea what the charges were in the writ?”

“No, but you know Joseph and Hyrum escaped from prison. On Missouri's books they are fugitives. You didn't think the Legion was just for show, did you?”

“I'd heard the army was back in business,” Mark answered slowly. “Frankly, I hoped it was just a result of Joseph's boyish desire for the theatrical.”

“It isn't. You know he hasn't given up on Zion.”

“I know that in Springfield he was expending a lot of energy cursing the Missourians, especially Boggs.”

Mark took a deep breath and turned to face his friend. The passing years had changed Andy. The boyish exuberance was gone, and Andy's mouth had settled into a grim line of determination. Besides the unexpected touch of gray in his hair, Mark had noticed the shadows in his eyes.

“Andy, how's it with you? Do you still believe Joseph is a prophet?” Andy hesitated only a moment before nodding. Mark pushed, “With the keys of the kingdom, that he's the Christ for this dispensation? Do you really, Andy?”

They walked in silence. The mid-September evening was full of the clarion echoes of life. They were hearing the shouts, the ring of a horses' hooves against stone. There was a distant sound of a waterfall, the faraway toot of the ferry and, close at hand, the innocent laughter of their wives.

Mark sighed and said slowly, “Andy, I believe a man's relationship with his God is the most important part of life. Not just from man's viewpoint, but from God's, too. This makes me believe God'll do more'n we could ever hope to make himself known to man. The information is there if man will go about getting it in the right way. Part of it is believing that God's not going to strike a man down for having an honest question about what the Lord expects of him.”

“Well and good,” Andy said slowly, “but there's got to be a point of contact. Where does that begin? Sometimes us humans are so poor and ignorant we have to let someone else do our thinking and make contact with God for us. Surely God won't fault a man for that.”

“He'll fault a man for stumbling over truth and refusing to acknowledge it is truth. There's a verse in the Bible that's been burning into me. I can't quote it, but the gist of it is that there's a way that seems right to man but it ends up leading to death.”

“How can God fault a fellow for doing his best?”

He shook his head. “Only, seems to me, if the fella is ignoring the obvious . . .”

“How's that?”

“God wouldn't put out two books with completely different instructions.”

“You're back on that old tack, about not believing that the Bible is translated correctly.”

“No, I'm talking about the
Book of Mormon
contradicting the revelations Joseph's giving out as from the Lord.”

Andy turned and grasped Mark's arm. “Who told you about the revelation? Who's been talking? This is not to be spread around right now. With the other problems, we can't afford to let it leak.”

Mark knew his face gave him away. Andy dropped his hands and shoved them into his pockets. He watched Andy hunch his shoulders as he muttered. “Forget it, Mark; forget I even mentioned it. Do me a favor and pretend this conversation didn't happen, huh?”

Mark promised, but Andy's excitement made him ponder the question he had so innocently raised. Whatever the secret, the revelation must be very important.

Chapter 4

Monday dawned—a bright, clear September morning. Mark had just left for Nauvoo. Jenny sat on her front steps, enjoying the morning and waiting for the wash water to boil. In the kitchen the sheets and towels waited beside the stove, along with a bar of brown soap shaved into wafers to dissolve quickly in the boiling water.

Jenny's front door faced east; to the south, beyond the pasture, the forest pressed close. To the west, the trees and the craggy slope of their land dipped down into the deep river gorge. When the night silence held the land, Jenny could hear the water crashing over the rocks upstream, and she could imagine it gentling, moving into the shallow basin at the bottom of the gorge before taking up its rapid trip down the Mississippi River.

The gorge was a separator—only a minor gouge in the terrain of the land and water, but a deep chasm between neighbors. She knew Gentiles owned the land on the bluff across the basin. Beyond them was the Gentile town of Warsaw, and already Jenny was learning they best be shunned.

Turning her face to the south, feeling the sun and hearing the peaceful morning song of the birds, Jenny brooded. Was Nauvoo to be only another Missouri? But nature said
no
, and she tried to take heart from the message.

The water was beginning to simmer. Jenny went to stir in the soap and push her sheets and towels into the tub.

When she came back to the porch, the mood of her thoughts had broken. The steps needed to be swept, and the apple tree had released a shower of fruit to the prying fingers of last night's wind.

For a brief moment, she was caught and separated from the familiar pattern of her thoughts and the demanding spirit-tug which so often held her captive for days at a time. She thought of yesterday; the Sabbath-day worship had broken the tide of spirit control. But it was more than that.

On the Saturday before, the day she and Mark had shopped in Nauvoo before visiting Andy and Sally, she had felt the nudge.

The linens were threatening to boil themselves out of the tub. Jenny pushed herself off the step and hurried into the kitchen.

When the last of the clothes were pinned to the line, Jenny returned to the step, realizing now her need to do some serious thinking. What about the contrast between Springfield and Nauvoo, between those women who had been her friends and Sally?

She frowned and bit her finger. “Same old thing,” she muttered. “It's Sally. From Kirtland time, even when I've not been seeking the craft, I've always had Sally to remind me of all I'm not. She's holy. Doesn't take much to realize that. She's living her religion, and I can't even call the power down.”

With a snort of exasperation, Jenny got up and went into the house. The talisman was still pinned to her Sunday frock. She smiled at the memory as she released the medal and slipped it into the pocket of her apron. “All spiffy I was,” she said with a chuckle. “Me in my best calico with the talisman and the Bible and the
Book of Mormon
going to meeting with my apostate husband.”

She paused to sigh over Mark and her thoughts fled back to Springfield—how fruitless that time had turned out to be! In the beginning there had been such promise of winning Mark to the true gospel.

“I can't be held totally responsible,” she murmured, moving about the living room. She assembled the pile of charms and opened the green book to a new and untried way of calling down the spirits. Dutifully they had gone to church, not the one true church but one which Mark had selected.

He would never know the churning inside, the nerve-tearing anguish of hearing those words read when she knew they were all wrong.
After Joseph teaching us the Bible wasn't translated by men gifted to handle the job
, she thought,
how nigh I was to pushing my hands over my ears; trying to keep from hearing the words contradicting everything Joseph's been teaching!

Jenny paused to clear the table between the two chairs. Her lips twisted. Mark had it all planned. The pretty new table with the lamp centered there and the Bibles on each side, his and hers. She stacked the Bibles on his chair and opened the green book.

For the next hour Jenny murmured the words and mixed the charms; when she finally stood to her feet, her heart was pounding. Already she was sensing the swirling forces moving nearer and she slipped easily into the trance, chanting with determination, then feeling her body slipping into the disjointed, released world of the spirits. The room about her receded and grew dim.

Coming back to her world was a shock. She knew it first in a moment of disappointment and nausea as she stood trembling and blinking in the noontime sun. She was outside, but she couldn't recall getting there. Her frock was soaked with perspiration and her hair streamed down her back.

A sense of awe gripped Jenny as she walked slowly into the house. The mood she had wrapped about herself with the chants and charms had become the most intense experience she had ever felt. As she moved slowly across the room, she caught the reflected image in the mirror and turned to study herself. But could that image be Jenny?

The room seemed dark. She stepped close and leaned toward the mirror. A smoky floating cloud surrounded the image she was seeing. She blinked and pressed closer. The image twisted, her own familiar features distorting, warping. In horror she saw the familiar becoming strange and repelling. The dark cloud was tearing at her hair, poking her eyes until they were only black pits. The scene before her became the forest. Tree branches grew into torturing hands and dug into her face, her body, wound in her hair and held her suspended, helpless.

Jenny's heart was pounding—a drum of thumping, compelling anxiety. Suspended, perspiring, at the mercy of nature, she swung. Life returned. Not seeping, trickling back, but life rushing, demanding. The distorted face remained, but in the background, beyond the trees, a dot of red was growing, moving.

“No!” On tiptoe, Jenny surged forward, her fists pounding, shredding the image into slivers of meaningless light that for one moment glowed deeply purple.

The heavy frame with its fragments of glass crashing against the floor broke the spell. Jenny was flung back into life. In awe she looked at the floor and then at her bleeding fists. Blood. Trembling, horrified, for one clear moment Jenny saw herself at the mercy of the unknown.

When Mark returned home, a serene wife was moving about the kitchen. The pile of fresh laundry wafted woodland perfume from its wicker basket. Mark kissed the freshly washed and coiled mass of dark hair, nuzzled the pale cheek and noticed the bandaged hands.

“Now what have you butchered or broken?”

“Oh, Mark, the mirror! I'm so sorry. It just happened.”

Mark captured her hands and she saw him pale. “My dear, you could have been badly hurt!” He studied her face and pushed her into the chair. She allowed him to fuss about the kitchen and later wash the dishes.

The next day Jenny made her decision. Again Mark had gone to Joseph, and she was left alone. She sat on the steps and studied her bandaged hands. “It could have been worse.” She shuddered. Blood. That was bad.

She was still shivering, now at the memory of that shadowy image in the mirror. She dared not say it aloud lest the spirits hear, but the words trembled through her being—
I am done with them, forever
. She knew the emotion she felt was fear, but it was also acceptance of defeat.

Jenny closed her eyes and leaned against the porch railing. The warm breeze ruffled her hair while the river crashed and the birds sang in the trees. It was a lonesome feeling to be the only human in this place. Even the birds seemed confident and at peace in their world.

“If only I could tell Mark,” she whispered. But she visualized the horror on his face and shivered. Never would Mark understand, even if she were to explain that the power was really for his sake.

Then she felt a nudge inside, and she returned to the contemplation of the Sabbath meeting, held at the place called the temple grove. Sally had pointed out the hill, telling her it would be the site of the new temple. But for now, the grassy plot circled with trees would be the temple and meetinghouse.

Joseph's unexpected appearance had made the meeting special. Over the cheering and shouting, the tears and clinging hands, Joseph had stood before his people.

“Governor Reynolds of Missouri—” he began, then paused to grin while the boos and cat-calls filled the arena, “has issued a writ for my arrest. I needn't be reminded that I'm a fugitive from the wrath of Missouri, so I went for a little walk by myself while the sheriff's posse visited our friendly city.” He paused, waiting for the laughter to end.

“Seems he didn't like the general atmosphere of the city and therefore gave up and went home. Brethren, hopefully that will be the last of them. I think he may have been motivated by fear of the Legion and the goodly number of people who are a great deal more friendly to me than they are to him.”

Jenny had lost ears for the rest of the sermon. The movement of people and the tide of emotion had her attention. She was overwhelmed by the contrasts—the careworn and the excited, the old and the young. But all alike were reflecting back to Jenny a mood much different from what she had felt in Missouri.

Once again she saw Joseph's people as proud, confident, and very holy. She knew herself scrubby, poor, and unholy in comparison. Her gaze had fastened on Sally standing in front of her. Her blonde hair had been captured under a smoky-gray bonnet which shaded her face and shadowed her wide blue eyes into a mysteriously regal expression.